Wednesday, 15 December 2010

When discussing mass immigration proponents will tell you that immigration increases a nation's economic activity. The implication is that the national standard of living increases with it. Therefore it is absurd to be opposed to mass immigration because who is opposed to increasing one's standard of living? It may be true that mass immigration does bring an increase in a nation's economic activity but this does not necessarily translate into an increase in the national standard of living.

To take a simple but not unrealistic example imagine an immigrant from South Korea who settles in Toronto and opens a neighbourhood corner store. He has already contributed to Canada's economic activity simply by traveling here because he would have employed the services of others to get here. He will also employ the services of others to help him navigate Canada's immigration laws. He contributes further to Canada's economic activity by buying basic goods and services. To make a living he opens a corner store. This too contributes to economic activity. Despite all of this he has thus far done nothing to increase the standard of living of Canadians and most likely never will. The fact that he is in Canada and has opened a small business has almost no effect on increasing Canadian's standard of living. The only ones who benefiting in this arrangement is immigrants, not Canadians.

It could be argued that one doesn't make a difference but many do. As reasonable as this sounds this isn't the case. Having gleaned this Australian op-ed piece from this thread we read:

That's fine for them, but it doesn't necessarily follow that a bigger economy is better for you and me. Only if the extra people add more to national income than their own share of that income will the average incomes of the rest of us be increased. And that's not to say any gain in material standard of living isn't offset by a decline in our quality of life, which goes unmeasured by gross domestic product.

The most recent study by the Productivity Commission, in 2006, found that even extra skilled migration did little or nothing to raise the average incomes of the existing population, with the migrants themselves the only beneficiaries.

This should be taken in consideration of a 2008 British House of Lords study that concluded the economic benefits of immigration to Britain is negligible. Since Canada accepts more immigrants per-capita than either Australia or the U.K. it is quite likely that any economic benefit mass immigration brings to Canadians on average is nil.

Toronto may be the canary in the mine. According to a recent survey Toronto ranked as the "most miserable city" in Canada. I don't know if I care to give this study much credence because how do you measure something like happiness? I will say that immigration has not made Toronto a more desirable place to live. Indeed, I say it is ruining it. What good has it brought to those who live there? A diversity of dishes in the guise of ethnic restaurants that are predominantly frequented by the city's childless cultural elites? Okay, what else? Take your time, I know it's hard to think of something else. Cultural festivals that most Torontonians don't go to? Anything else? That's it? Can't think of anything else?

What mass immigration has given Toronto is the worst gridlock in North America and as a consequence adding stress to the daily lives of Torontonians through increased commute times and more polluted air. It has contributed to escalating hydro rates through increased demand, has increased wait times in the city's emergency rooms, and is adding strain to the city's public services. Toronto now has a garbage problem it does not know how to solve. Immigration has created a scarcity of affordable housing and maintains upward pressure on the prices of single family dwellings thus negatively affecting both the poor and young families alike. Since housing in Toronto has become unaffordable to many, immigration is what is fueling urban sprawl threatening some of the most fertile soil in all of Canada while bringing Toronto's urban problems to the suburbs and beyond. The city is being divided up into ethnic ghettoes (including white ones) creating social tensions while becoming a place many a Canadian would find alien (and cause many a tourist to stop and make sure that they are in fact in Canada). And this is saying nothing of the jobs that will be denied to many Canadians in Toronto for the sake of "diversifying the workforce". Toronotonians, possibly all of Ontario, can expect higher taxes just to address the problems mass immigration has brought to the city. Talk of toll roads is just the start. So, if Toronto has become the "most miserable city" in Canada then it should be obvious why. These are things that determine one's quality of life and standard of living and immigration has attack it negatively while contributing to the economic activity of the city. Oh yeah, staged car accidents are on the rise but I'm sure it's unrelated.

Toronto is headed toward a scenario where nearly two thirds of residents will be in the low income bracket by 2025, according to a study released Wednesday.[...]

Prior to this latest update, one released last year that was based on the latest census data showed that 15 of the city’s middle income neighbourhoods have disappeared since 2001. The majority of these areas reverted to low income, where individual earnings were 20 to 40 per cent below the city average.

It shows that if current trends continue, a total of 10 per cent of the city will be middle income earners by 2025; 30 per cent will be upper middle income; and a whopping 60 per cent of Toronto’s residents will be in the low to very low income bracket, sources say.

That’s quite a swing from 1970, when 66 per cent of Toronto neighbourhoods were middle income, 15 per cent were upper income, and 19 per cent were low income.

But I'm sure immigration has nothing to do with. It's only a coincidence that the city's immigration and "minority-majority" population will also be around 60% at the same time.

So what of the economic health of the nation? Well, Canadians can expect persistent high unemployment for one thing while the Canadian economy crawls at a modest 1.6% growth rate until 2017. Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney reminds us "the crisis is not over" while Canadians are spending far beyond their means. This dangerous rise in debt levels coincided with the rise in precarious work (part-time, contract, seasonal, temporary) while well paying, stable full-time jobs with benefits are outsourced to the countries Canada is importing immigrants from in a two front attack on the incomes of working Canadians. Canadians, indeed the majority of North Americans, have witnessed a stagnation of real wages and incomes for the past thirty years.

Immigration has done nothing to increase the standard of living for Canadians and their incomes as they have to manage record levels of debt with precarious, insecure jobs just to maintain an illusion of prosperity. One has to wonder how much of this debt is being serviced by immigrants behaving like full fledged citizens of "shopping mall Canada", the only Canada they care to belong to. And the government's solution: maintain existing immigration trends for the foreseeable future including Canada's destructively high intake numbers. Thanks for nothing!

It is too often stated that Canada was built by immigration. If things don't get back under control it will ruin the country. Feel-good slogans and baseless assumptions will not be enough to save us. What is clear is that the vast majority of Canadians reap no benefits from the nation's immigration policy and are most likely victims of it in one way or another.

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

And it's about f**king time! The laughably high acceptance rate Canada lavished on Sri Lankan asylum claims has been an embarrassment to this country and a knock at the credibility of the Immigration and Refugee Board. It really was a con game and we Canadians were being played for saps. From the Vancouver Sun:

For each month from January 2009 to July 2010, the percentage of accepted refugee claims from Sri Lanka was typically greater than 80 or 90 per cent, the data show.

But in August, the month the Tamils arrived aboard the MV Sun Sea — sparking a heated debate about Canada's refugee system and vows by the Harper government to crack down on human smuggling — the percentage of accepted claims dropped to 75 per cent. It then plunged to 47 per cent in September.

Since it takes an average of 22 months for a refugee claim to be heard, none of the cases decided in September were connected to the migrants aboard the MV Sun Sea.

So it looks like Sri Lanka's Tamils are going to have to get in line and apply to immigrate to Canada just like everybody else instead of shamelessly scamming a humanitarian system.

If this is not an anomaly, as the Canadian Tamil Congress hopes it is, and is indicative of an ongoing trend that will witness further drops in acceptance rates then this will substantially hinder Sri Lankan immigration to Canada since Sri Lankans, especially the Tamils, have been primarily dependent on Canada's asylum system to immigrate here. Were it not for the most gullible and generous asylum system in the world, along with its partner in crime the family reunification act, there wouldn't be much of a Sri Lankan Tamil presence in Canada speak of let alone a Sri Lankan one.

I wouldn't be angered by this if I genuinely felt they were real refugees but my researching the matter tells me otherwise. I often wondered why Canada was the target of so many asylum claims from Sri Lanka yet witnessed very little from places like Darfur or Rwanda. The simple explanation is that real refugees do not have the relative safety to wait around at a specified spot in their home country for their government issued passport to arrive in the mail. Nor do they have the financial means to buy a plane ticket, or a spot on a smuggler's boat, to travel half way around the world to make an asylum claim, passing through safe third countries en route.

Real refugees are constantly on the move. That's why they are called displaced persons. The only time they are at a fixed address for a determinant amount of time is when they make it to a refugee camp. Yet, thanks to the Singh decision, these are the one's we ignore to favour the gate crashers. That's the whole irony of Canada's asylum system. By allegedly being made compassionate it is least compassionate to those in need of real sanctuary.

If one good thing can be said about the abuse of Canada's asylum system by Sri Lankans it is this: they have demonstrated to us the fiasco that is our refugee system and the need for the government to return to a process by which claims are vetted abroad. Inland claims should be turned away if they arrived by way of a safe third country. Failing that they should be detained until their status is determined and not released before that which is what we do now. Inland claims should be discouraged but since this is how lawyers and refugee advocacy groups get paid expect resistance by them at the cost of those who need our help the most.

The publication of this book in a line of books critical of Canada's immigration system is encouraging. Along with the official launch of the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform I hope a momentum is brewing to put pressure on the government to bring some sanity to, what I feel is, an unpopular, destructive, and unsustainable immigration system.

I argue that not only does Canada accept too many immigrants for its own good, it is importing them from too few source countries. According to this report it appears a growing number of Canadians agree.

Forget changing whether we take more family immigrants or skilled workers, a new poll shows Canadians want to shake up the selection of countries from which we select immigrants.

A Leger Marking poll of 1,503 Canadians found that 40% of Canadians say the government should limit immigrants from certain countries in order to change the mix of immigrants coming to Canada.

[...]

In 2009, close to one-third of all new immigrants to Canada came from just three countries - China (29,049), Phillipines (27,277) and India (26,122).

When we add in the rest of the Asian nations approximately half of all immigrants to Canada, if not more, come from one region of the world. Simply stated Canada is importing too many Asian immigrants.

In Toronto immigration means Chinese, Indians, Filipinos, and then everyone else. I'm sure it is the same across the nation. Though Toronto's motto is the Orwellian sounding "Diversity is our strength" the immigrants Toronto mostly receives mocks that motto because they are anything but diverse since three nations make up the lion's share of immigrant producing countries.

Now, this wouldn't be a bad thing if Canada was an Asian nation itself but it is not (at least not yet). The rapid introduction of a people into a host society that is dissimilar to it causes integration problems and societal stresses in the form of racism, distrust, prejudice, a lost sense of community and belonging, among others. The end effect is colonialism, not nation building.

Thursday, 4 November 2010

If anyone needs convincing that Canada's federal MPs care more about their jobs than those of the people they allegedly represent than look no further than the latest announcement concerning immigration levels. Barely crawling out of a deep recessionary period that created an unemployment level above 8% (unofficially it is probably above 10%); coupled with an OECD report that projects an unimpressive rate of growth for Canada averaging at 1.6% until 2017; these amid predictions of a jobless recovery; Jason Kenney, minister responsible for immigration, has the nerve to tell us that the governemt intends to keep immigration levels steady between 240,000 and 265,000 new permanent residents next year.

If that isn't bad enough he also announced that the government intends to decrease the number of economic class immigrants by 5,000 while increasing the number of spouses and children and refugees. In other words they want fewer skilled immigrants to settle in the country while increasing the number of unskilled immigrants because "Canada's post-recession economy demands a high level of legal immigration to keep our workforce strong”. Does that make sense to you? Can anyone with a rational mind wrap their brian around that and explain how lowering skilled immigration and raising unskilled immigration will "keep the workforce strong"?

Whether Jason Kenney is conscious of it or not he appears to have given a veiled pessimistic view of Canada's economy in the years to come. Why would you want immigrants with high expectations over those whose expectations are lower in comparison if the jobs Canada will be churning out are low paying, low skilled, dead end occupations? He seems to be aware of this and that's why he wants fewer skilled immigrants to come to Canada.

Ultimately this is an ill-advised decision made to save political careers. The Conservatives do not want to jeopardize their bid for a majority in the next election by potentially offending immigrant and ethnic vote banks in Canada's voter rich urban centers. They know that were they to do the right thing and reduce immigration levels at this time their political opponents will jump on them and denounce them as anti-immigrant in the hopes that such baseless accusations will score them political points with ethnic urban voting blocs. Sadly none of them seem to appreciate the possibility that immigrants want less immigration too.

What other reason could it be? We are told that we need to maintain a mass immigration regime to "keep the workforce strong" as the economy crawls along at the lightning speed of 1.6% growth a year. When we were in the midst of the recession we were told we needed to maintain a mass immigration regime to (get this) "prepare for the recovery". When the economy was healthy and booming we not only needed to maintain a mass immigration regime, we were told, to keep pace but we needed more immigration.

So the question is what economic conditions will necessitate less immigration? The Trudeau Liberals thought the recession of the early 1980s was enough to reduce immigration targets and that's what they did. Now it seems we need a depression and then, maybe.

Monday, 25 October 2010

This news article out of the Toronto Star describes a Sri Lanka that is not rosy but not bad either. What is remarkable about this article is that the paper bothered to send a reporter to get a first hand account of what is going on instead of editorializing on second hand information from the comfort of the paper's offices at 1 Yonge Street. And if the negative conditions that the reporter chooses to focus on are the worst a Tamil in Sri Lanka can expect then compared to millions of other people in the world they have little to complain about.

The negative spin it is giving a healing nation is to be expected since it is pandering to a 250,000 strong reader base that it wants to sell to advertisers. This is in comparison to the the almost non-existent attention it has given to Toronto's 10,000 Sinhalese Sri Lankans. The only time the paper bothered to pay attention to the Sri Lankan Sinhalese living in Toronto is when it reported, in passing, of an act of vandalism against a Sinhalese owned restaurant in Brampton and a firebombing at a Sinhalese Buddhist temple, two events that occurred after the LTTE was defeated. I don't recall if the paper ever bothered to get a Sri Lankan Sinhalese perspective on the war instead spilling most ink to curry favour with the large Tamil diaspora in Toronto. From a business angle this makes sense. It is better to sacrifice 10,000 potential readers for the sake of 250,000. At the end of the day the paper is still a profit seeking, profit maximizing entity beholden to the concerns of shareholders.

Though the article attempts to make it appear that Sri Lanka's Tamils are still victims after the war there is nothing in the article that would justify an asylum claim. And how bad can things be when, as the Toronto Sun reminds us, many Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada return to Sri Lanka to holiday.

The final blow should be thisCTV BC report where we learn that some who arrived on the MV Sun Sea had their asylum claims rejected by the U.K.

Speaking in Delta, B.C., in front of one of the two ships used to bring in migrants, Kenney told reporters the government has learned some of the migrants were already found not to need refugee protection in the United Kingdom.

In immigration and refugee circles this is what is called asylum shopping and by my understanding the UN Convention on Refugees, which the U.K. is a signatory nation, has provisions to prevent this kind of behaviour. So if the U.K. rejected these people then why should Canada accept them?

Like any pest if you see one then there is a whole bunch you are not seeing and this is true about Canada's refugee system.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Daniel McLeod has seen the situation several times.

"It may surprise someone like Mr. Kenney who hasn't been around the refugee field that long, but I've been working in the area for 20 years and it's not common, but it's not unusual for someone to come to Canada who's been refused in another jurisdiction."

Honest words from the parasite lawyer.

So it appears Canada is granting asylum to people no other nation would consider a refugee. Is this compassion or naive stupidity?

The arrival of the MV Sun Sea is generating information that delegitimizes the excessive presence of Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada. Looks like some repatriations are in order. We have been played for fools and rightly so because we are a nation of trusting fools. Acceptance for Sri Lankan refugee claims should drop dramatically and approach zero if any competency is to be found at the Immigration and Refugee Board. Sadly my confidence in the IRB is lacking so I expect the foolishness so continue.

Wednesday, 20 October 2010

One of the unchallenged myths that is allowed to propagate in any discourse about mass immigrations is that it brings with it technological innovation to the host society. This seems to be a given, I suspect, based on the assumption that the mass influx of a people into a society will at least include a Guttenberg, an Einstein, or what have you that will excel and bring rewards and bragging rights to whatever country that agrees to host them. Thus, Canada must maintain an open mass immigration system not unlike the nets of a deep sea troller scrapping the ocean floor to catch the best fish. The question is if the assumption has any basis in reality? I don't think is has much.

Despite decades of mass immigration Canada is still considered a commodities based economy with a poor record on technological innovation even though Canada hosts some world class institutions of higher learning and has contributed to advances in the sciences and technological innovation while, I must add, in the absence of a mass immigration policy. It seems mass immigration has not delivered the miracle of technological innovation it promised. Indeed, it may have the opposing effect.

Guns, Germs, and Steel attempts to explain why it was Eurasian people who did the conquering and no one else; why it was the Europeans who conquered the Americas, Africa, and Australasia and not the other way around. His book is not a glorification of European culture and society. Far from it. He claims Europeans had advantages offered to them that allowed them to prosper and conquer over weaker and more "primitive" societies. And it wasn't just the Europeans but other societies who behaved in like fashion had similar advantages offered to them as well. To go further into detail will just side track this post but this wiki entry will suffice. Needless to say what I want to get across is that Diamond approaches the topic from an equalitarian point of view on the origins of man, a view that is at home in a left of center paradigm.

On pages 249-48 in the chapter titled "Necessity's Mother" he discusses explanatory factors that historians of technology suggest may determine and explain why a particular society may be receptive to technology and engage in technological innovation. One of the factors is:

The availability of cheap slave labor in classical times supposedly discouraged innovation then, whereas high wages or labor scarcity now stimulate the search for technological solutions. For example, the prospect of changed immigration policies that would cut off the supply of cheap Mexican seasonal labor to Californian farms was the immediate incentive for the development of a machine-harvestable variety of tomatoes in California.

This suggests that cheap imported labour discourages the need to seek alternatives and thus inhibites technological innovation. I think this is true. For a real world example we need only to look at Japan. It's lack of an immigration policy and scarcity of labour in the face of an aging population has made it one of the most technologically innovative societies in the world. Equally important is the Japanese government's intervention in the Japanese economy as well as a culture that has grown to appreciate technology and innovation.

That last sentence would explain the United States. The U.S. is still the leader in scientific and technological discovery but this has to do with government intervention via the Pentagon in the creation of new and better technologies for the benefit of U.S. based corporations. Aside from a few imported scientists and engineers the mass immigration policy of the U.S. contributes little to its success as a technologically innovative nation state. In fact, it may be a hinderance in some regards.

The assumption that mass immigration brings technological innovation to a host society is specious at best. Necessity, culture, and government support appear to be the deciding factors.

Thomas Walkom is proving to be the only writer worth reading at the Toronto Star. In this piece he takes organized labour to task over its failure to capitalize on the recession to marshal the people to its cause. Following on what he wrote I have this to ask: why is organized labour silent about the harmful effects of mass immigration on not only the wages and salaries of working Canadians but also on the standards of their work environment? Much of the gains made by the labour movement over the course of its history is being undermined by mass immigration. The steady importation of a desperate people willing to work for any wage under any conditions only undermines labour's negotiating power and relevance.

The unions that have suffered the most are private sector unions. This is not surprising given the mobility of capital and the option to outsource work beyond the reach of unionized labour. On top of that they too are subject to the ups and downs of the business cycle and sometimes are forced to make concessions so as to save their jobs.

On the other hand public sector unions live in a world of their own. Not only do they monopolize the services they deliver they are also not as affected by the business cycle as everyone else is. Their jobs, though not guaranteed, are relatively more secure than those in the private sector yet somehow have better benefits and incomes.

Public sector unions are now, pretty much, the labour movement as private sector unions are at their weakest. So why no show of solidarity and compassion for the working man by pressuring the government to reduce immigration quotas that effectively attack working Canadians?

I am not familiar with what compelled her to make that declaration so I'll turn things over to Pat Buchanan at vdare. Perhaps he can explain it better than I can.

Here in Canada we do not hear those kinds of statements at least not from politicians who hold a high office. The occasional journalist or pundit may take a stab at multiculturalism but this is more the exception than the rule. Typically it is routine cheerleading all around.

We Canadians are told that multiculturalism works for us but by what benchmarks are they measuring that success? It they mean that by holding our immigrants to the lowest expectations of civic participation, that they vote and pay taxes, then no wonder they call it a success. It's like failing a test and saying you still passed because at least you tried and that's all that matters. It's also very, very lazy.

We are also told that Canada as a "social experiment" has garnered positive results but it is too soon to say the experiment has concluded and the results are in. The experiment is far from over and the possibility that it may fail is very real. When that happens who is going to clean up the mess? How do we correct the mistake? Who is going to take responsibility for it?

If the experiment fails then the country is lost and ruined. That is the stake we are gambling with and it is too much to risk.

So if the multicultural society has failed for Germany then are we to assume it is because the Germans didn't make it work? Are Germany's immigrants free of blame? Perhaps it is they who didn't make it work and proved that multiculturalism as a social policy is a disaster. After all Germany has a legacy of Nazism it wants to atone for and has spent the past several decades creating a more open and tolerant society for minority groups of all stripes and being more welcoming to immigrants.

My assessment is that Germans are waking up to the realization that multiculturalism means the elimination of a national identity. In order for multiculturalism to work the German cannot exist for if the German existed then specific signifiers can be isolated to help us identify who is and who is not a German. It's the same thing here in Canada where everyone and no one is a Canadian at the same time. It's a paradox the robs Canadians of an identity of their own so that others can retain theirs. In its place Canadians are encouraged to accentuate their ancestry and the nation's immigrant history but at no time can the Canadian exist. The Canadian, or the German, is antithetical to multiculturalism.

So there you have it. You can either have multiculturalism or you can have the Canadian. You cannot have both.

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

There are those who see nothing wrong with Canada absorbing more newcomers per capita than any other country — about 250,000 people annually.

Perhaps they haven’t noticed that our largest cities, particularly Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, are bursting at the seams with immigrants and refugees. The federal government lets these tens of thousands of people in and then pretty much washes its hands of them.

Cash-strapped municipalities are left with the difficult task of integrating the new arrivals, many of whom can barely speak English or French. As experts have warned, newer cohorts of immigrants are not faring as well economically as previous generations of people who arrived on our shores.

This is what Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford was getting at and what his critics don't fully appreciate. Ottawa sets immigration quotas yet it is those who live in Canada's largest municipalities, especially Toronto, who suffer the costs.

“That’s an awful lot of people who come here who are not qualified. How does that help the country?” asks Julie Taub, an Ottawa immigration lawyer who’s on the board of the new think-tank.

Taub, who does regular duty counsel work at a legal aid immigration clinic, says she was astounded to see immigrants who were supposed to be self-supporting come in for free legal assistance.

These were skilled workers who were accepted into Canada on the condition that they had enough money to live for a year. Yet, several months after arriving, they were on welfare. “If Immigration Canada says they have to bring enough money to live for a year, shouldn’t they be letting the provinces … know that they’re not entitled to go on social services for a year?” says Taub. “There’s a sense of entitlement that is unbelievable.”

One way Punjabi immigrants scam the immigration system, I recently learned, was to hire an immigration consultant who deposits a considerable amount of money into a bank account. That or take out a loan. Either way is meant to create the false impression that the potential immigrant is financially sound when the opposite is the case. This seems to be what is at work here. Immigrants are providing false financial statements to pad their applications and once accepted into Canada are then able to collect social assistance as well as benefit from other social services.

So, are immigrants "contributing" to Canada or exploiting her? And what is meant by "contributing to society" in the first place? How is acting out of self interest contributing when doing so is selfish in behaviour?

About half of Canadian employers say their appetite for hiring foreign-trained workers is reduced because of difficulties assessing their abilities, according to an internal survey commissioned by the federal government.

Employers' qualms about hiring workers trained abroad revolved around the challenges of evaluating their education credentials, their language skills and their work experience, the survey said.

It also said interest in hiring foreign workers was lowest among small business owners, who make up the bulk of Canada's employers, and highest among larger companies.

The survey, conducted by Ekos Research Associates in March for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, involved telephone interviews with 519 small, medium and large companies and 15 business organizations.

The Thai government arrested 155 illegal Sri Lankan immigrants Sunday, part of a group that Canadian officials believe were attempting to sail to Canada and seek refugee status.

The Government of Thailand said its commando unit and immigration bureau raided several apartments in 17 locations and arrested 155 Sri Lankan immigrants, many who had no travel documents or had overstayed their visas.

The immigrants are suspected of being Elam rebels, or Tamil tigers,the National News Bureau of Thailand’s public relations department said.

Thai police said they found a picture of the Tamil Tigers’ late leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, during the raid.

The raid may have been at the prompting of Ottawa. From the Toronto Starwe read:

The Canadian Tamil Congress says it’s extremely concerned by reports 155 Sri Lankan migrants have been arrested in Thailand and that Ottawa may have played a role in the crackdown to prevent the migrants from setting sail for Canada.

Congress spokesman David Poopalapillai said his organization has spoken with a relative of one of the Tamils arrested this past weekend in a raid of 17 Bangkok locations.

A relative? Are we correct then to assume that Canada's Sri Lakan Tamils are helping to smuggle people into the country?

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the minister cannot confirm or deny operational matters.

The federal government will not sit back while Canada becomes a target for criminal operations that try to take advantage of the country’s generosity, the spokesman added.

[...]

Lisa Monette, a Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, provided few details Tuesday on the government’s role in the Thailand arrests.

“We are aware of the operation conducted by Thai authorities,” she said.

“Canada is engaged with a number of countries in the region on issues regarding migrant smuggling, including pursuing co-operation with source and transit countries. We will not comment on operational issues that may compromise any ongoing or future efforts.”

I hope it is true that Ottawa did play a role in the arrests because it means the government is actually doing something about queue-jumping immigrants, so the Canadian Tamil Congress can whine all they want.

This is, of course, an inefficient way to deal with the problem. Instead of getting to the root of it the government has chosen instead to confront people smuggling in a cat-and-mouse game. Here is Martin Collacott writing in the Ottawa Citizen:

While many Tamil civilians were killed, wounded or displaced in the fighting between the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan government forces that ended last year, the case cannot be made that Tamils in general in Sri Lanka suffer from persecution. Among other things, they continued to occupy senior positions in government throughout the civil war and still do so. The situation in Sri Lanka, moreover, could not have been as dire for Tamils as asylum seekers allege since large numbers of them have gone back to visit their relatives after filing their claims in Canada. Yet a further factor worth considering is that in Colombo, the largest city in Sri Lanka and located firmly in the Sinhalese south of the country, 30 per cent of the population are Tamils who have been able to continue with their daily lives despite the conflict.

Refugee activists, nevertheless, argue that Tamils in Sri Lanka must be under threat simply because we have accepted close to 90 per cent of their refugee claims over the years. What such figures demonstrate, however, is not that Tamils are being persecuted in Sri Lanka but that something is seriously wrong with our refugee system. In 2003, for example, when Britain accepted only two per cent of claims from Sri Lankan Tamils and Germany only four per cent, Canada approved 76 per cent. In the same year, Canada accepted claims from far more Tamils than did all the other countries in the world combined.

Our attraction to asylum seekers in general is not only that we accept the claims of large numbers that no other country would consider to be genuine refugees but that we provide the most generous system of benefits available anywhere for those making a refugee claim. It is hardly any wonder, therefore, that tens of thousands of individuals make refugee claims in Canada every year and that Sri Lankan Tamils have been so adept at using the system that they have succeeded in establishing in Canada their largest overseas community in the world.

It is easy to figure out why the Tamils bypass Tamil Nadu in India, their motherland, where 61 million Tamils live and many other countries in between Sri Lanka and Canada and land on our shores. It is our lucrative welfare system.

They know that Canada is the goose that keeps laying golden eggs -- a country that pays welfare cheques starting at $585 a month -- when converted to Sri Lankan rupees is 58,000, which is a fortune in Sri Lankan terms. To sweeten their attraction to Canada, they are offered welfare housing, medical services, and a free legal aid system to fight their cases in court, and their children will receive free post-secondary school education.

They are smart to know that couples with children under six years of age could also apply for the universal child care benefit each month for each child. They are also eligible for a federal child tax benefit and the national child benefit supplement, which they could not get in Sri Lanka.

So who wouldn't want to come to Canada and be with Canada's nice people?

They know that a couple with one child can get $327.66 per month as child care benefits on top of $1,058 under the Ontario welfare system and that Scarborough and Markham, where they will eventually will end up, are indeed cities in Ontario.

These Tamils also know that, once they receive their Canadian passport, they can get on the first flight out of Canada with no questions asked by the Canadian authorities to return to Sri Lanka for holidays and visit relatives, the country that they ran away from, saying that they were persecuted.

With incentives like these is it any wonder why anyone from anywhere will try to game Canada's refugee system?

If we are serious about tackling the problem we need to look at the cause of it which means looking at ourselves and admitting we made mistakes.

Straightening out our highly dysfunctional refugee determination system is no easy matter. For one thing it is hamstrung by our adherence to an international convention that is badly out of date in relation to today's realities, such as the multi-billion dollar international people-smuggling industry.

The situation is further complicated by a Supreme Court decision that would not have occurred had a section of the Charter of Rights and Freedom been drafted with greater care.

The government did, in fact, introduce legislation in Parliament earlier this year designed to make modest improvements to the system -- but it was largely gutted by refugee advocacy groups and lawyers in concert with members of the opposition hoping to curry favour with immigrant communities whose members have been notably successful in exploiting the refugee system in its current state.

As far as I'm concerned they are enemies of the state since immigration is a sovereignty issue and if these groups have undermined Canada's ability to police her borders than they have in effect eroded our national sovereignty.

Ultimately we cannot depend on countries like Thailand to police our borders for us. Not only is it unfair but it is our responsibility.

The aspiring refugees are being dishonest when they tell Canadian officials they fear for their personal safety in Sri Lanka, says Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris. And a recent internal study by the Canadian High Commission in Colombo seems to give the minister’s claim some credence.

[...]

“The people who are now asking for refugee status are doing so for economic reasons, not because they fear for their lives. Okay, that is part of human nature. Everybody wants to improve their lot in life.

“They want to see greener pastures. That is fine. But to ascribe that to atrocities that are alleged to be taking place in this country, or to hide behind a smokescreen of imagined delinquencies or wrongdoings is, to say the least, disingenuous and it also does harm to the country.”

The Canadian High Commission in Colombo recently conducted an internal study and examined a limited number of case files of Sri Lankan Tamils who have been granted asylum in Canada since the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009. In more than half of the cases, the refugees had later returned to Sri Lanka after receiving Canadian citizenship and passports.

“It certainly raised some eyebrows,” Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said recently in an interview with the Star in New Delhi.

“It’s a limited sample size but we do have a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest there’s a lot of people who gain protected status and return to their original country. We believe there is widespread abuse of our asylum system.”

How nice of Jason Kenney to finally take notice. So how about doing something about it? The report goes on to state that the RCMP has established an office in Colombo as part of an effort to address the issue. Great! More band aid solutions to a chronic problem that will cost Canadian taxpayers more money but when you have decided not to invoke the notwithstanding clause in the Charter to repeal the Singh decision, as Jason Kenney has done, what course of action is left?

Immigration has helped make Toronto one of the most successful and diverse cities in the world. That’s the good news. The bad news is, a lot of immigrants aren’t doing well. Many of them live in what are known as “priority neighbourhoods,” where unemployment is high and incomes are low. The number of people receiving social assistance has gone up. Although the city has no say in immigration policy, it pays the bills. Meantime, another 100,000 immigrants are arriving in the city every year.

[...]

Canada admits 250,000 immigrants a year, a higher rate than any other country. Why? No one can say. It’s not to raise the birth rate or replace our aging workers – the numbers don’t work out that way. Is it to create wealth and improve our productivity? If so, it isn’t working.

Mr. Burney argues that current immigration policies are dragging down our productivity, not increasing it. The two fastest-growing groups in our population are aboriginals and new immigrants. “They’re also the ones with the fewest skills to perform in our economy,” he says.

Our system is supposed to select for success. But only 17 per cent of new arrivals are fully assessed on the basis of their employment and language skills. Half never meet a visa officer at all. Most of the people we bring in are “family class” immigrants, including parents and grandparents. The Centre for Immigration Policy Reform estimates that recent immigrants receive billions of dollars a year more in benefits than they pay in taxes. “We’re building a problem of enormous proportions,” Mr. Burney says.

The man she is quoting, Derek Burney, likens the immigration system to a numbers game and he is right. It's all about the numbers and it doesn't matter who gets in just as long as quotas are filled.

Take the refugee system as an example. It is clearly dysfunctional yet little is being done to remedy it. It is likely the refugee system isn't helping genuine refugees at all but has become another avenue for immigration by those who can afford to game the system. There are far better and more efficient ways Canada can help genuine refugees and weed out scam artists but there is no political will to pursue these avenues.

Take the importation of aged parents as another example. If we truly were concerned about Canada's aging demographic, the effects it will have on health care costs and wait times, and the availability of workers to support pensions and other social programs then why are there more than 100,000 people of retirement age in the backlog of immigrants who have been approved to come to Canada? Why has so much priority been placed on getting people into Canada who will most likely never work a day in their lives but will place considerable demands on Canada's social programs?

When the system is about numbers it doesn't matter who gets here and how. Just get them in, get them citizenship, and get them voting. That's all that matters.

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

I started this blog with a few goals in mind and getting Canada's diplomatic mission in Chandigarh, Punjab, India shut down has been added to the list. Two more stories published in the Toronto Star add fuel to the fire and illustrate why Canada's diplomatic mission in Chandigarh, Punjab, India does not serve Canada's interest as it is a complete waste of money.

The first one takes a look at the unscrupulous, unethical, lecherous face of immigration consultancy in the Indian state.

Sandeep Ohri is a dashing 42-year-old who revels in zipping through the traffic chaos in his gleaming Mercedes, passing billboards touting him as the leading immigration consultant in Punjab state.

But Canadian officials see someone else: an extraordinarily brazen and successful scam artist in an industry rife with deceptive swindlers willing to provide applicants with a litany of sham documents — everything from fake airline tickets and doctored bank statements to forged letters from Canadian-based funeral homes.

Of the nearly 500 visa applications formally rejected this year, 228 come from Ohri and his firm, OGIC Immigration Consultants.

[...]

The six visa-section staff who work at Canada’s mission in Chandigarh, Punjab’s capital, review 40,000 visa applications a year from students, family members and prospective immigrants. While official statistics aren’t available, one senior Canadian diplomat estimated at least a quarter of those applications are refused because of fraud.

“More would be if the processing was completed, but sometimes you know it’s fraud and just refuse the request and close the file,” the diplomat said.

India is Canada's top source for immigrants simply because of the volume of applications the country produces due to the size of its population. Of those who immigrate approximately half of them come from the state of Punjab. Punjab is home to the majority of India's Sikhs thus there are more Sikhs in Canada than Hindus. Hindus comprise the majority of India's population at 80%; Sikhs are only 2% (there are more Christians in India than Sikhs). In Canada Sikhs constitute roughly 50% of the Indo-Canadian community whereas Hindus are just over 30%.

In Punjab, "the average per-capita annual income of $484 is still the highest in the country" which means in relation to rest of their compatriots Punjabis are not necessarily hurting. They have money.

With that said we come to the second article. This one reveals the financial extent to which Punjabis go to send a son over-seas to secure "a better life" for the family. This can be realized in the form of remittances or the eventual importation of the entire family into western countries through family reunification schemes.

Now, though the story is presented as a tragic tale of a Punjabi family who only tried to make a better life for themselves I cannot say I share that sentiment. I believe they got what they deserved. You see, in India western citizenship is a status symbol and the article makes this clear.

In the small village of Kapure, it is not about keeping up with the Joneses. It’s about keeping up with the Gills and Dhaliwals.

On a narrow, dusty street, one house after the other boasts visible signs of prosperity — a fresh coat of paint, air conditioners, brick driveways and new cars. The children, playing hide and seek, wear Reebok and Nike.

The neighbours share not only affluence but also a common source of it — almost every family has a son, son-in-law or nephew living abroad and sending money home.

Every family, that is, except the Bhangus.

[...]

In many villages, almost every house has at least one person in North America, England or Europe.

Those that don’t, like the Bhangus, are considered pariahs, says Krishan Chand, who’s been studying the effects of immigration on villages with the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development. They are excluded from events and, in some cases, parents are not able to find husbands for their daughters.

Thus starts the chase where these left-out families will do anything in the hope of sending a family member — usually a son — abroad.

This leaves them vulnerable to the smooth talk of unscrupulous immigration consultants. But the prospective immigrant is not a babe in the woods free of blame. They oftentimes participate in the fraud.

Typically agents provide prospective university and college students, and others, with fake bank statements and other doctored documents to support their visa requests, which are usually rejected without proof of one’s ability to pay school fees and living expenses.

Others provide their clients with fake passports and visas. Most are rejected.

A visa officer at the Chandigarh mission’s consular section told the Star’s Rick Westhead last year that the staff is deluged with applications sent with phony documents. “Over the past year, 85 per cent of employment letters related to work visa applications have been forgeries,” he said.

[...]

The Bhangus find it hard to believe they are living this nightmare.

Prabhjot says he resisted for some years but then started exploring various avenues, but found he couldn’t immigrate to Canada under the points system, or as a student or on a work permit.

The family knew there was a better chance of finding a well-to-do husband for Hardeep, who had turned 20, if Prabhjot was abroad.

That’s when Prabhjot says a friend from the village who now lives in Toronto introduced him to an immigration agent. The agent promised to take Prabhjot to Toronto for $48,000.

Things go downhill from there but at least he escapes with his life. Not so for Amandeep Kaur Dhillion. Remember her? The status seeking impulses of her Sikh family back in India sacrificed her happiness and sold her into a loveless marriage so that they can use her to immigrate to Canada. She was stabbed to death on January 1, 2009, her father-in-law was charged with first degree murder.

Punjab is a hot bed of fraud and so, in their infinite political wisdom, the Liberal Party of Canada opened a foreign mission right in the belly of the beast. Opened in 2004 to reward Sikh voting blocs for their loyal support Canada has the only foreign mission in Punjab's state capital. With an annual operating budget of around $25 million a year the mission serves no purpose other than to waste Canadian tax dollars by funneling scam artists, the pathetic, the mediocre, the greedy, the aged, all into Canada. But they eventually vote and isn't that what really matters in the end?

Jason Kenney, Canada's minister responsible for immigration, was in India recently to specifically address the immigration abuses Canada is subjected to by Indian applicants, particularly those in Punjab. Well good luck with that. Why should India care? Why would India want to curb the steady outflow of non-resident Indians into foreign countries who can then influence domestic politics and the economy to satisfy India's interests?

Forget India. Canada needs to protect itself and the way to do that is to shut down the damn, useless mission in Chandigarh. For one thing it plays into the hands of the immigration consultants in the state by making the execution of their scams all the more easier. In this regard Canada is an accomplice to the crimes.

Also, what quality of immigrant is the mission helping to import into the nation when many of the applications are clearly fraudulent? If these people are willing to go so far as to defraud the Canadian government and the people it represents then they don't deserve to come to Canada at all. And what kind of Canadians will they be, if you can call them that, if Canadian citizenship is nothing more to them than a status symbol on par with an expensive car and fancy golf clubs?

Canada needs to shut down the mission as well as curtail immigration from India altogether. We simply accept far too many immigrants from that country to be of any worth. And of that county a considerable sum come from one particular region. Indeed this is characteristic of the immigration system as a whole. Almost 60% of immigrants come from Asia and of that 60% most come from a few source countries chiefly India, China, and the Philippines. This doesn't say much about diversity in the immigration system now does it?

I don't think the mission will be shut down at all. As I mentioned before Sikhs constitute roughly 50% of the Indo-Canadian community. Because of this disproportionate over-representation in Canada, coupled with their clout as a well organized voting bloc, Canada's political parties trip over each other to insincerely pander to the Sikh community for political support. There's votes to be had and if a stagnant economy with an 8.1% unemployment rate isn't enough to encourage Canada's governing parties to curb immigration then don't expect anything to be done respecting Indian immigration fraud.

“We’re in a different world today,” he said Monday, following a meeting with private sector economists.

In a blunt assessment, the usually optimistic Flaherty said Canadians need to rein in their hopes for the economy.

“This is not a time of booming economic growth, it’s a time of modest growth and there needs to be some adjustment of expectations.

“We’re not going to see the boom times that we saw before in the shorter term,” he said.

How about that? So when the economy was booming we were told we needed the highest per capita intake of immigrants in the world to support it. Now what? Oh right, we still need the highest per capita intake of immigrants in the world to "prepare for the recovery" which will happen when exactly? Get the feeling that the federal government is not being honest with the citizenry about the real intent of maintaining high immigration quotas? Do they even know what they are doing?

The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom thinks Canadians should expect almost no assistance from Ottawa to help them through these uncertain economic times. I think he's right.

But now, belatedly, Ottawa has recognized that this country is not immune from a crisis that still roils the industrial world. In particular, it is not immune from a crisis ravaging this country’s biggest market, the U.S.

Canada’s economy may not sink back into technical recession. But neither is it expected to prosper.

Few forecasts are optimistic. Economists at the University of Toronto’s policy and economic analysis program don’t expect the national jobless rate to drop to pre-recession levels until at least 2016.

Thomas Walkom fails to mention the cutting of immigration levels as a course of action Ottawa should adopt to protect Canadians in the current economic climate.

However he does have this to say:

All of this may help explain why Flaherty wants Canadians to make an “adjustment” to their expectations. Here’s what that means.

Young people should not expect good jobs when they leave school. The unemployed should not expect any work at all.

The sick should expect health care to be cut back. The poor should expect to get poorer.

The old should not expect the pensions they worked for.

In effect, the finance minister says, expect very little from this government. Take him at his word.

Canada can and should help the developing world, but we also must help people trapped in poverty and hunger at home.

The United Nations meeting coincided with an important local event, the release of the Daily Bread Food Bank’s annual Who’s Hungry report. The statistics are alarming. This past year, food banks experienced a 15 per cent increase, the largest rise in client visits since social assistance rates were cut by almost 22 per cent in 1995. As a result of the economic downturn, with many losing their jobs or having their hours cut, the number of people who have to rely on food banks to feed themselves and their families is at its highest ever.

An alarming number of people in our city are borrowing on their credit cards just to be able to pay the rent and buy groceries. Of all clients interviewed, 28 per cent had used a credit card or line of credit to pay for basic needs such as housing and food. These are honest, hard-working people, many with disabilities, who are either unable to work or have lost their jobs.

In the 905 region, food bank use increased by 21 per cent from 157,000 visits annually to 190,000. This is likely due to a higher number of layoffs in the manufacturing sector in those areas of the GTA.

In our enthusiasm to prove Canada’s engagement in global economic, aid and security issues, we cannot forget that our own house is not in order.

Dramatically cutting immigration targets will give recent immigrants and the recently unemployed a fighting chance in the current labour market. Not doing so only reveals the collective indifference of all of Canada's politicians towards their plight. There are few excuses left for maintaining dangerously high levels of immigration outside of political necessity.

With Canada’s doctor shortage still dire, medical authorities are under constant pressure to let more foreign-trained medical graduates work here as physicians. But two new studies point to a significant roadblock: close to half of those who make it past rigorous screening and into family-medicine post-graduate training fail to pass their certification exams.

[...]

Researchers and officials stress that the findings do not suggest Canada should turn its back on foreign-trained MDs who settle here — especially since they save taxpayers the substantial cost of medical school education — but that more needs to be done to help them become full-fledged Canadian physicians.

Although the two studies, just published in the journal Canadian Family Physician, are the first to expose the problem widely, the phenomenon has been well-known within the medical community, doctors say.

The article mentions that one of the solutions to the problem is to only accept graduates from internationally accredited universities. Sounds like a good idea.

I have some solutions of my own. How about building more medical schools (and close a few law schools in the process) to train Canadians to meet the nation's needs instead of poaching the developing world of its much needed medical staff; which is what we are doing right now.

A much more practical and achievable solution is to cut immigration numbers and cut off the importation or aged parents and other sickly relatives. What has not been fully investigated is the effects mass immigration has had on wait times and on an increasing patient to doctor ratio. Nor do we fully understand the financial strain mass immigration is having on Canada's public health care system. Given recent immigrants diminishing economic performance immigration may very well be the straw that breaks the camel's back. I don't think Canadians want to sacrifice their health care system for the superficial novelties of a multiculturalism policy dependent on mass immigration.

If Canada wants to avoid the rise of extremist, anti-immigrant political movements, a new lobby group in Ottawa is saying we need to have a serious debate now.

[...]

According to Statistics Canada, the gap between the earnings of Canadian-born men and immigrant men grew dramatically between 1991 and 2006 - a period when immigration numbers increased dramatically.

Other studies have shown it now takes longer for immigrant families to catch up to Canadian-born families in terms of earnings.

Canada's immigration and refugee system allowed 634,509 people to enter the country in 2009. Of that group, 252,179 were permanent residents compared to 382,330 temporary residents who came as foreign workers or students.

I should also add that I leeched all the links from this thread at freedominion.ca.

Sunday, 26 September 2010

While Ottawa likes to boast about how well our economy is doing, compared with others, the reality is that we are not doing all that well. Indeed, complacency about the challenges we face is a real danger.

Here are two reasons why we should be concerned:

First, we are not creating the jobs we need to enable Canadians to achieve a middle-class lifestyle. While job numbers have increased, we also have to look at where those jobs are coming from, and their quality.

If we compare the employment picture in August, the most recent month available, with August 2006, the year before the Great Recession began, we find the number of jobs between the two Augusts increased by 727,500.

But 75 per cent of these new jobs were in the public sector, jobs that depend on tax revenues. Moreover, 64 per cent of all new jobs were part-time. In this period, manufacturing lost 348,000 jobs.

[...]

Second, young people today are having a truly tough time, even if they go to college or university. Too many young Canadians are having to settle for temporary or contract jobs while others cannot find jobs that match their education.

Many Canadians in the 15 to 24 age group are still students, but those who are no longer members of the student population — and this includes many high-school, college and university graduates — had 168,000 fewer full-time jobs and 77,000 more part-time jobs.

These employment problems suggest we are not building an economy that can deliver the rising expectations we enjoyed in the past.These expectations were based on the belief that if we studied and worked hard we could expect a good job with a rising standard of living.

Instead, we face the prospect of an insecure future and a declining standard of living. Over the coming decade, there’s a good chance there will be little income growth as we struggle with a slow recovery from the Great Recession and eliminate deficits from the stimulus spending necessary to avert a depression.

The once-robust housing market has sagged. The trade surplus has vanished. And economists across the spectrum have slashed their growth forecasts. In the last eight days alone, the danger signals have come thick and fast.

• On Sept. 9, Statistics Canada reported that the country had chalked up a record trade deficit of $2.7 billion in July.

• The following day, StatsCan issued a dismal labour force report. The unemployment rate climbed to 8.1 per cent in August. The private sector shed jobs.

• This past Monday brought a double dose of bad news. The Canadian Payroll Association reported that six out of every 10 Canadians would be in financial difficulty if their paycheque were delayed for even a week. That was followed by a StatsCan report showing household debt had risen by 6 per cent during the recovery to a record $1.48 trillion.

• That was followed Wednesday by another monthly drop in manufacturing sales, with motor vehicles leading the way.

Despite these claims Ottawa intends to introduce more that 250,000 immigrants into this economic environment this year and the years to come as well as an almost equal number of temporary foreign workers. The rational is silly at best: they are needed to "prepare Canada for the recovery". When this recovery will happen is anyone's guess.

The David Crane article is an op-ed piece against thisToronto Star editorial titled "Immigration: New citizens serve us well". It doesn't state how "new citizens serve us well" but I'm sure many Canadians will differ (just read the comments to the editorial for starters).

Citing what I believe is this Nanos poll the editorial claims "roughly 80 per cent of us see a steady influx of newcomers as 'a key positive' of life here" thus implying a whopping majority of us "support" immigration. The editorial is jumping to conclusions and playing fast and loose with the findings.

For starters that 80% is a combination of those who agree (65.3%) or somewhat agree (16.1%) with the statement that immigration is beneficial. Also, the question itself is non-specific and that's a problem. Immigration is a good thing and I'm not surprised to see sizable majority support it but when you get into specifics a different picture may emerge. For instance the same poll reveals that 38.9% want the numbers sustained, not increased, and 32.4% want immigration numbers reduced which means 72% of respondents do not want immigration numbers increased despite saying immigration is beneficial. You see, the problem is too much immigration. The other problem is that we are accepting too much immigration from too few source countries resulting in a kind of immigration that is colonizing in character. It is not nation building; it is population replacement.

Even if there is 100% support for immigration it is irrelevant if the economic environment is not there to support a considerable influx. We are in that kind of economic environment and it is harmful to stay the course. The last government to reduce Canada's immigration intake was the Trudeau Liberals in the early 1980s in response to an economic downturn and it was a non-issue; understood as a rational course of action. Today that is almost impossible without ignorantly being branded a bigot, xenophobe, or racist first even though a dramatic reduction in intake targets is what is best for the country and recently arrived immigrants. This just shows how debased and co-opted the discussion has become.

In Denmark the Danish People's Party secured 25 seats in the nation's 2007 elections on 13.8% of the vote. Like the Sweden Democrats they were campaigning for a stricter immigration policy.

These elections are significant because these parties are enjoying support in what are considered Europe's most tolerant and progressive nations. They are not exceptions but are following a trend in Europe.

Another trend taking root is the erection of walls or fences to secure borders. The United States and Israel have shared considerable criticism for constructing walls that reinforce their borders to control the flow of smuggled goods and illegal migrants; but they are not the only countries doing so.

India is currently in the process of constructing a fence along its shared border with Bangladesh. The reasons are familiar: to control the flow of illegal goods and migrants. It should be noted that Bangladesh is almost completely engulfed by India.

Mexico, with no sense of hypocrisy, is building a wall along its southern border with Guatemala. The reasons are no different: to control the influx of contraband and illegal migrants from Guatemala into Mexico.

Here is a list of countries that have built fences to control the migration of people.

So it seems the world trend is to secure borders either with a strict immigration policy or with a physical barrier or both. Canadian hubris compels us to imagine that the world "looks to Canada" for inspiration when it comes to formulating policy but that is more fantasy than reality. Were it true than we shouldn't expect to see an increasing desire to restrict the influx of migrants into foreign lands. Clearly Canada is in a world of her own.

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

After you read the title of this post what kind of workplace did you imagine? What was the racial make up of the employees? Who were the racists? Who were the victims? Read the post title again and hold that thought.

Now read the following:

Part of the problem seemed to lie in the new Employment Equity Commission. The commission had been set up by Rae specifically to advance the cause of disadvantaged groups, including racial minorities. Most staff members hired were from the four disadvantaged groups. But soon it was torn itself by racial animosity. Julie Mason, former director of communications for the federal NDP, worked for about one year at the commission. She later called it the most racist workplace she had ever experienced.

"I've never seen anything like it," Mason said. "It was absolutely vicious.... The blacks hated the Indians; the Indian were the most antisemitic; everyone hated the lesbians and gays.... There was a real pecking order. At the bottom were people with disabilities. Next to the bottom were white women. There were no white men, not until they had to bring in John DeMarco [a senior bureaucrat in Citizenship] to fix up the mess."

The above is from the book Rae Days: The rise And Follies Of The NDP by Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom and can be found in the chapter titled "Same Boat Now" (pp. 215-16 to be precise). The book is about Bob Rae and his years leading the NDP government of Ontario.

Some people have a hard time defining the word irony let alone using it correctly but if anyone has a hard time understanding it then let the above do the explaining. How fitting that a commission called the Employment Equity Commission; established by a socialist government to address assumed systemic discrimination in the workplace; staffed by people of alleged "disadvantaged groups"; a symbol of multicultural harmony free of the negative influences of the evil white man be described as "the most racist workplace" ever experienced by a member of an alleged disadvantaged group. And the icing on the cake is that a white man was needed to "fix up the mess."

I am of the opinion that the more racially diverse a society becomes the more racist it will be and if the workplace environment of the Employment Equity Commission can be taken as a working model of the liberal multicultural social fantasy, of Canada's future, then I seem justified in thinking that. This is because immigration fueled multiculturalism destroys a common identity that can unite a people and in its place a tribal mentality takes root.

Sunday, 19 September 2010

Here is an interesting read. It is illustrative of the biased (dare I say deceitful?) reporting of our public broadcaster in the service of its pet hobbies; multiculturalism and its yang, mass immigration.

From the Winnipeg Sun we read:

My sources tell me Mohamed Jama is sitting comfortably in a hotel in Bosaso, Somalia right now. No extremists holding him up at gunpoint at the inn, nor in a government-chartered plane on the tarmac of the local airport.

That despite what the CBC was reporting all week.

I notice our public broadcaster hasn’t issued a retraction or a correction on their story, after being duped by Jama that he was under siege by gun-toting extremists.

The Canada Border Services Agency has confirmed repeatedly that the deportation was carried out as planned and without incident and that there were no gun-toting extremists firing at a plane Jama was in, as the CBC reported.

Instead, the CBC perpetuates the story that somehow the Government of Canada did the wrong thing by deporting Jama to a dangerous, war-torn country and they rely on a phony story cooked up by Jama to prop up their editorial position. Pretty pathetic.

At this point, whatever happens to Jama is no longer our problem. He was a repeat, violent offender who showed no signs whatsoever of changing his ways. CBSA had an obligation — for the safety of Canadians — to deport the refugee, notwithstanding any dangers he might face back home.

The position that we should compromise the safety of Canadians in favour of Jama’s safety back home is misguided. I think the people who hold that position would change their tune very quickly if they or their families became Jama’s next victims had we not deported him.

Canadian Immigration Report juxtaposes the above story with the CBC one here.

It is a given that the sources of news reporting have a political slant that they are trying to front under the guise of journalism. Objectivity has been discarded long ago if it ever existed at all.

But these media outlets are typically private enterprises. They can report on what they want in the way they want.

I am aware of the implications of such a system on a democratic society and on the notion of informed consent which is why alternative media sources are invaluable.

However, the CBC is a publicly financed institution therefore it doesn't enjoy the liberties of a privately owned company. It is constrained by its obligation to the taxpayers to whom it owes its continued existence; to the tax dollars Canadians are forced to pay by law. It should function as objectively as possible so as not to show favouritism and thus be in the service of Canadians who are of all ideological persuasions.

It is clear that this is not the case. The CBC has become co-opted by left leaning cultural elites who use it as their soap box for propaganda purposes. And on you dime whether you like it or not! This is a key difference that separates the CBC and its news wing from the private sector. If you don't like the slant of a particular newspaper then you don't have to buy it or read it. If you don't like the slant of a particular news channel then you don't have to watch it or subscribe to it. Canadians through their tax dollars support the CBC whether they want to or not. That being the case then how about some conservative content?

CBC news routinely delivers select stories spun to support their world view and presented as if objective fact. In this sense they behave like Fox news. Since multiculturalism and its partner in crime, mass immigration, are favourites of the left then can we expect anything other than systemic cheerleading of both? No wonder Canadians are so misinformed about either issue.

Thursday, 16 September 2010

The Institute for Research on Public Policy has found that, even with postsecondary education from a Canadian institution, newcomers who arrive in Canada over the age of 18 are more likely to be underemployed, or even unemployed, than both their Canadian-born peers and those who come to the country at an earlier age.

"The earlier in life immigrants arrive, the more their academic paths will resemble those of their Canadian-born counterparts, and the easier it will be for them to master one of the official languages in Canada," said Maude Boulet, one of the study's authors and an expert in industrial relations at the Universite de Montreal.

Co-author Brahim Boudarbat, a former University of B.C. labour economics professor who now teaches at UdeM, said the difference comes down largely to linguistic ability and cultural integration.

"One interesting thing that we found is that immigrants who come very young make almost the same [education] choices as those who are Canadian-born do" when it comes to fields and levels of study, Boudarbat said.

"It matches the native labour market."

There are few things we can take away from this.

The first is that it suggests that the problems that have plagued post-1990 immigrants still exist today. This means that things have not gotten better but have either stayed the same or have gotten worse. It makes it clearer that the system is not working; that we are importing too many people most of whom are ill-equipped to compete in the labour market.

Secondly it reinforces that language proficiency in either English or French is paramount when it comes to landing a suitable job in Canada. Yet, we routinely import en masse immigrants who have no command of either even in a functional sense.

Thirdly it tells us that the children of immigrants are not interested in the jobs that Canadians won't do either. They end up competing for jobs and schooling placement that are already in high demand by Canadians.

So what is the point of the immigration system exactly when we are importing labour that businesses are clearly not interested in hiring? How can Canada maintain a viable labour pool when it is introducing people into it who cannot speak either English or French? To what benefit is it to Canadians when the children of immigrants just end up competing with their children for school placements and jobs? Job vacancies will remain in "jobs Canadians don't want to do". (It should be noted that immigrants do not want to do those jobs either but are forced to do so for the sake of survival.)

Canada currently has an 8.1% national unemployment rate during a recessionary period. Previous studies have shown that immigrants who enter Canada in such an unstable economic environment tend to take longer to meet Canadians on an economic level if they do at all.

So what is the government doing about it? Well, you will be pleased to know that the province of Manitoba in partnership with the federal government announced a $15 million project, phase 2 of something called the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program, to provide "Manitoba nominees in China and the Philippines with pre-arrival settlement orientation and labour-market preparation services." Sheesh!

We don't need more immigrants especially form Asia where 60% of all of Canada's immigrants come from (making a mockery of the principle of diversity). We need less and more selective immigration. This will benefit the immigrants already here and those to come.

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

A couple of polls suggest that a majority of Canadians are in opposition to Canada's immigration system.

The first poll, reported here by the Toronto Sun, reveals that a majority of Canadians want all the Sri Lankan Tamil migrants who arrived by boat off the coast of British Columbia to be sent back.

By a margin of five to one, Canadians say the government should reject the almost 500 would-be refugees from Sri Lanka who arrived last week.

The Leger Marketing poll of 1,500 people, released exclusively to QMI Agency, was conducted from Aug. 2 to Aug. 4 as the ship travelled towards the British Columbia coast.

Asked which statement best described their own opinion on what should be done with the ship, which may include members of the banned Tamil Tiger terrorist group, 60% agreed with the statement: "They should be turned away - the boat should be escorted back to Sri Lanka by the Canadian Navy."

Just 17% agreed with the statement: "They should be accepted into Canada as political refugees."

A significant number, 20%, said they did not know which answer to choose and 4% did not answer.

Alberta ranked highest with 74% of respondents there saying send the boat back and just 11% saying let them stay, while Quebec was the second highest with 64% opting to send the boat back and 15% saying the passengers should stay.

I happen to agree with the Canadian Tamil Congress in their assessment of the poll results:

The Canadian Tamil Congress believes the poll results are a reflection of feelings towards the immigration system, not Tamils themselves.

“I think there is a growing frustration,” said spokesperson Manjula Selvarajah.

I think he is right. I don't think Canadians are angry at the Tamils just because they are Tamils but what their arrival, and the way in which they came here, represents. What they are becoming angry at is unfettered immigration and its effects on Canadian society. They are angry at a government made impotent by the Singh decision, a government ineptitude at dealing with it, and a government indifferent to the concerns of a growing majority of Canadians. This leads me to the next poll reported here in the Globe and Mail as well as here.

From the second link we read:

More Canadians are questioning whether immigration is benefitting the country, with Albertans and Ontarians voicing concern over the role of illegal immigrants in Canadian society, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found.

The online survey of a representative sample of 1,007 Canadian adults also found that half of respondents would not allow the Tamil migrants who arrived in Canada a few weeks ago to stay in the country as refugees.

Overall, 46 per cent of respondents (+5 since August 2009) say immigration is having a negative effect in Canada, while 34 per cent (-3) believe it is having a positive effect. Albertans (56%) and Ontarians (55%) are more likely to view immigration in a negative light than respondents in all other provinces.

The arrival of the Tamil ship may have skewed the numbers a little but I think Canadians are slowly waking up to the full effects of Canada's mass immigration system. And they don't like what they see.

Citing improved conditions in the country Australia feels confident enough to deny asylum to those originating from Sri Lanka.

So let's recap shall we.

The UNHRC has assisted in the return of 852 Tamil refugees to Sri Lanka from India in the first six months of 2010. Indeed, citing improved security conditions in the country the UN has gone so far as to state that countries of the world should no longer presume someone fleeing Sri Lanka to be a genuine refugee.

Just over 70% of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees have returned to Sri Lanka for various reasons bringing into to question the validity of their asylum claims. In one year alone 8,600 Sri Lankans with refugee claims pending in Canada applied to the Sri Lankan High Commission in Ottawa for travel documents so they could go back to Sri Lanka for visits.

Martin Collacott, former Canadian high commissioner to Sri Lanka from 1982 to 1986, has written in the National Post "the suggestion that Tamils are being persecuted as a people in Sri Lanka, however, is nonsense and is a myth propagated by Tamil extremists."

An internal Citizenship and Immigration Canada communication noted that “returnees (to Sri Lanka) are dealt with professionally and, unless there are outstanding criminal warrants, deportees and other returnees are simply returned to the community on arrival after brief and professionally conducted interviews.” Also, “other countries have successfully returned large numbers of failed asylum seekers, and Sri Lanka is a safe destination for unsuccessful refugee applicants.”

I don't know how much clearer it can be when even the United Nations is saying Sri Lanka is now a relatively safe country for its Tamil population to return to. With that said Canada should do the same as Australia and send back anyone making an asylum claim in Canada who of Sri Lankan origin.